


Disrupted

by Bonuscat



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Descriptions of Blood, Gen, Guys in White - Freeform, Implied Torture, Phic phight 2020, Reveal, partial reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23563543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonuscat/pseuds/Bonuscat
Summary: Prompt by Nocturna Starr for Phic Phight 2020: It turns out that the views of Agents O and K are not held by the rest of the Guys in White. Basically, the GiW scientists are horrified when the two newest agents bring in a fourteen-year-old half-ghost kid for "painful experiments"Completed, but I want to add some extra scenes at some point
Comments: 26
Kudos: 202
Collections: Phic Phight 2020, Phic Phight!





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny doesn't get to eat lunch, but bites off more than he could chew.

Danny cracked open the fridge, his other hand prepared to fend off whatever came out. Hearing nothing growl, he carefully opened it more.  Brownish shapes sprang at the teen, and he slammed the door. Too late. "Mom, Dad, the ecto-weiners chewed out of their container again!" Danny hollered, trying to trap the hot dogs under the strainer left from last night's spaghetti. "Quit biting me!" The weiners, surprisingly fast for pieces of meat, squirmed away, because nothing in Danny's life could be easy. "I just wanted to make a sandwich."

He chased them all down eventually, but not before the kitchen got a few new burns from where the halfa shot at the hot dogs pistol style. _Here's hoping those'll blend in with the other ones._ Angry leftovers and exploding tech were commonplace at Fentonworks. "I swear there were less ecto-weiners last week," Danny muttered, rubbing his smarting fingers. "Either Dad used the wrong microwave again, or there's a case of meat mitosis in the fridge." He brightened. "Hey, I remembered something from biology!" A puff of blue curled from the halfa’s lips. Danny sighed. "So much for catching up on homework over the weekend."

His ghost sense led him to a street a couple blocks away.  _ If this is the Box Ghost stealing someone’s package again, _ Danny thought, rounding the corner,  _ I’m leaving him in the thermos overnight. _

“Freeze, Phantom!” Operatives K and O sat on ATVs, a small ectopus thrashing in a net on the ground between them. Both men wielded white-washed ecto-weapons aimed in Danny's direction.

“You guys, really? Shouldn’t you be at a shoe polish sale?”

“I see you remember us from our last little stay,” K replied smugly. “During our last visit, we scanned your ectosignature because we were curious of why, out of  _ all _ the ghosts tramping around this backwater town,  _ you _ were worth a million dollar bounty.” He plucked an invisible speck off his tie. “Imagine our surprise, when the results came back reporting abnormal quantities of organic material.”

“Maybe your scanners are broken,” Danny said conversationally, hoping they couldn't see his glup from his spot in the air.

The two smirked, as if flawed machinery was beneath them. “Prepare to initiate maneuver Ivory Sword, variation four.” O barked. The weapons whined. “Fire!”

Danny ducked around blasts of green. “I think you guys spend more time at the drycleaners than at target practice,” he ribbed, absorbing a shot with an ecto-shield. The halfa twisted between shots, planning to faze the men’s guns from their hands; he didn’t trust them to care about property damage. Turning intangible, he dipped under the pavement. Danny flew forward then up, ready to grab the firearms. He didn't expect the agents to be ready for him. There was a ray of lime. Danny yelled and clutched his torso. Another light, pale and spiraling, pulled him into black.

\---------------

Darkness, cased in metal. He didn’t know where his arms and legs were; he could only tell they were still attached because they had fallen asleep. Up and down were jumbled. The minutes mixed together, but he thought he had been trapped for a while. Suddenly -- or perhaps it was after countless hours -- he sensed himself being stretched and spun, pushed towards a light that hadn't been there before. Out, out, out!

Danny thumped against green-tinged metal, chest burning. His breath came in hitched gasps. Through limp bangs and glassy green eyes, he could make out concrete walls painted a hospital white.

“Subject appears to exhibit a proclivity for respiratory mannerisms,” a man’s voice said. “Is there a breathalyzer anywhere in here? Thanks.” K shoved a piece of plastic over Danny’s mouth.

“Wh-- Hey!” Danny jerked, pushing at the agent’s arm. O grabbed Danny’s wrists. He went intangible, but O still held him down. “Let me go!”

“Quit your squirming.” K elbowed Danny in the ribs, who yelped. “All the equipment here is ghost proof.” He removed the mask. “It’s breathing, alright. The exchange seems to be very similar to living movements.”

“Could you get the ecto-cuffs? My grip’s slipping.” K secured Danny’s wrists and ankles, half a cuff on one limb and the other clipped around a table leg. O rubbed at his gloves as if Danny were made of slime. “Shall we proceed with the experiments?”

“The long and really painful ones?" K grinned wolfishly. "Of course.”

“What are you going to do, kill me?” Danny jeered with false bravado. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re a little late to the party.”

O picked up a rod. To Danny, it reminded him of one of the metal sticks you used to roast marshmallows during a camping trip, if marshmallows were green and bit back. “Go ahead and laugh now, ghost boy,” O said. Sparks danced between the prongs. "while you're still in one piece."

\---------------

Operative R eyed the hissing mass Operatives O and K had brought in from Amity Park. The blond had heard of the town's haunted reputation, but he hadn't known how  _ strange _ its ghosts were. "Are we  _ sure _ this isn't an alien?" he asked his partner.

"It reads like a ghost," Operative H replied. She pushed back a dark strand of hair that had escaped her bun. "Still, a green octopus does sound like something out of  _ Space Wars. _ "

"What really weirds me out is that it's practically putty," he said, poking the ectopus between the fibers of the net. It snapped at his hand, and he jerked back. “I’ve never seen a ghost this tangible, have you?”

“Nope,” H picked up the net, holding it at arm’s length as the two moved the ectopus into a cage. “C’mon, let’s go get the keys to the lab so we can run some swabs.”

They went to the main office, shiny shoes clicking against clean tiles. “Morning, guys,” Operative G greeted cheerfully, setting her mug on her desk. “How can I help ya?”

“A couple of the new agents brought back a souvenir from Amity Park yesterday,” H said, returning the grin. “Mind if we use the lab for a bit?”

“Amity?” G's brow furrowed slightly. “K and O already brought the ghost from there to the lab. They told me they had gotten clearance from upstairs to run some tests.”

“What? But they’re field agents,” R frowned, “and there was only one report from them in the containment area.”

"Typical rookies.” H rolled her eyes. “We probably better go to the lab before they break something important.”

“I’ll come too.” G said, grabbing the spare key. “Those two probably managed to rile up whatever they’ve got in there.”

It was a good thing G had brought the key, because the door was locked when the three got there, and the “occupied” light was off. The pane of ecto-glass in the door was covered, which was only supposed to be done during light-related experiments. It could have been forgotten in whatever test was run last, and yet, didn’t the GIW pride itself in organization and cleanliness?

“I don’t like the looks of this,” R muttered, pulling out his ecto-taser. H did the same, putting down the ectopus's cage.

G opened the door, and the agents were met with the sight of K and O bent over a table splattered with green and red. “What have you  _ done? _ ” H cried, aghast. She had expected a bit of a mess, but this was far from a scratched microscope.

The two men moved in front of the table, as if the other agents wouldn’t do anything if the scene was concealed. “That’s our business,” K said authoritatively, hiding something sharp and wet behind his back. “This is a classified study.”

“Oh yeah?” G demanded, pointing. “Then how do you explain the steak knives and cattle prod? The GIW is supposed to observe anomalies, not tear them apart!”

O blanched. “I assure you, we’ve done nothing more than what would be done in a high school biology experiment.”

“Experiment!” R spat, flicking his taser to the standard setting. “This is a slaughter! There’s  _ blood _ dripping off of there!” With a shared look, he and H stunned the two men.

H and R stopped to restrain K and O, so it was G who saw the table’s occupant first. “Get the first-aid kit, quick! They’ve got a kid on here!” Swallowing the bile in her throat, the brunette ripped off handfuls of paper towels, pressing against the boy’s wounds. “Hang on sweetie, everything’s going to be okay.”

“Mom?” the teen murmured, eyelids fluttering. He twitched a bloody arm as if to touch her. “Whad’re you doin’ here?”

“Don’t move. Help is on the way,” G soothed, tearing off more paper towels. “Stay with me. Can you tell me your name?”

“I think I broke m’curfew. I’m not grounded, am I?” the teen mumbled loopily. Without waiting for an answer, he asked, “Mom, did y’know that I died once?”

“No, no,” G said, pressing harder, “You’re not dead. Don’t say that. You’re not dead.”

“Well, I didn'd die all the way,” he amended hazily. “Only part. I’ll show you, if you promise not t’ be mad.”

“Nobody’s mad at you, baby. Just stay with us,” G pleaded as R rushed back into the room.

“H is getting the medics and someone to deal with those two,” he panted, throwing open the first-aid kit. “Are you good with stitches? I'd be too shaky right now.”

“Trade me.” R planted his hands on the paper towels, and G began stitching the ugly lines marring the teens form. “We’re going to fix you up. It’s gonna hurt, because there we don’t have anything for the pain, but you just have to be strong, alright? Keep talking to me.”

“’m strong. I lifted a car once,” the teen slurred. “Do you need me t' do that?” A glowing ring appeared around the teen’s lacerated waist. R jumped back, and G nearly dropped her needle. The ring split in two, briefly turning the teen’s blood neon green before fizzing out. The boy stared.

“I don’t know what O and K did to this kid, but I’m going to  _ kill _ them,” R growled, placing his hands back. Then he paled, the gears turning in his head. “You don’t think all this ectoplasm is his too, do you?”

G stared at the green-red puddle on the table. "I hope not,” She tied off a stitch, feeling she'd barely made a dent. “Do you think you’re steady enough to start sewing?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeps be jumpin' to conclusions like it's the new hopscotch.

The teen was taken into the medical bay for a thorough examination of his injuries, but G, R and H didn’t sit idly waiting. The three agents poured over files from the surrounding states, combing through missing persons reports and death certificates -- just in case -- for any description that would match the boy. In time, after adding more states to the search, and several letdowns of dark haired, blue eyed teenagers, they found what they hoped could be the match. When they called the number on the missing persons report, the family on the line was overjoyed that the teen, Danny, had been found, but distraught when R told them that the specific details of the teen’s state would be “better for the doctors to say.” It was only a few minutes after the agents got off the phone when Dr. Tally arrived from the examination.

"We think we have a name,” Operative H reported to the doctor. “The missing person report was filed just a few hours ago. Daniel James Fenton, son of Jack and Maddie Fenton from Amity Park, Illinois.”

"The ghost hunters?"

She made a face. "They said they were ectobiologists as well, but yes."

G spoke up. “How _is_ Danny?”

“He's stable," Tally sighed. "The stitching pre-surgery kept him from bleeding to death, but we're going to have to cut a good section to work on the damage inside. Daniel has lost too much blood for another incision, so it's going to take time until we can actually start the surgery. We're working on a solution to match his blood, but none of the samples stay stable. He's on a regular transfusion for now, and his body has accepted it so far. The ectoplasm is completely bonded to his cells. An attempt to remove it could cause further damage. Did his parents tell you anything about this… condition?"

"It wasn't mentioned," R answered, picking at the button on his sleeve. "We didn't want to say anything, just in case they were kept in the dark for a reason, and they didn't bring it up." 

"Have O and K said what caused him to be contaminated?”

“All they’ve done is point fingers at each other,” H crossed her arms. “They’re too afraid of the legal consequences to say anything about what happened, which they _should_ have thought of that as soon as they saw blood.” Her scowl deepened. “I wish I had tased K an extra time. He deserves it.”

G slouched further in her seat. “This is all my fault. If I had just checked their papers better, none of this would have happened.”

“With how well they faked them?” H objected. “We’re _all_ to blame, G. Those two had been sneaking stuff in during their lab duties for _weeks._ ” More gently, she continued, “The stitching you and R did saved Danny’s life. You don’t have to beat yourself up like that.”

“He shouldn’t have needed saving,” G countered, her voice strained. She rose quickly. “I’m going to wait in the lobby for the Fentons.” H followed her, speaking softly.

R trusted his partner to help G; H’s softer side had brought him through hard spots many a time. He turned back to Tally. “When will the surgery begin?”

“He’ll be put under once he has enough blood back in him,” the doctor answered, then hesitated, considering. “If you want me to be completely honest, I’m surprised Daniel still has a pulse. He was bad enough off that we couldn’t give him anything for the pain until after the examination, because we couldn’t let him go to sleep until we had finished the diagnosis.”

\---------------

Danny woke up with tubes hanging over him. His eyes widened. Where was he? Had K and O taken him to a different lab? He tried to push himself up, and his shoulders felt like they were being pried from their sockets, and his ribs were almost certainly on actual, literal fire.

“It’s okay, Danny.” There was a woman in awful, awful, white next to him. She raised her hands 

placatingly. “I’m just checking your stitches and giving you clean bandages.”

Right, he was in a hospital. He was fine. Not trapped, not an abused operation toy, breathing, and (more or less) alive. The woman beside him was a nurse, and the white was broken up with a soothing blue. He was under a blanket, not restraints, and on a soft bed instead of a metal table. He even thought he recognized this nurse. If he remembered correctly, she was the one that muttered about his parents' neglectance when she thought he couldn't hear. He looked at the wall while she unwrapped his arm. Danny didn't want to think about the stitches, or how many he had on and undoubtedly in his body, or how much of him they might be holding together. There was also the fact that he couldn't remember getting _any_ of the stitching, even though apparently _two_ different people worked on him before he was put under anaesthesia.

The door opened with a bang. “Danny!” Jack, of course, with Maddie right behind him. His parents' jumpsuits had been forgone for civilian clothes, though his father was still wearing a neon orange that was almost a comfort to see.

The nurse frowned, then settled into a politely neutral expression. “Good afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, I presume? I have to ask that you refrain from making as… boisterous motions around your son. I know you’re ecstatic, and you absolutely have reason to be, but Daniel needs to be in a tranquil environment at this time.”

“I’m okay,” Danny croaked, trying to shake off the shock. Stupid sore throat. He smiled, pushing the memory of that particular reminder away to deal with preferably never. "I can't believe you guys are here.” He tried to sit up again, but his body loudly demanded otherwise. The nurse tilted the headrest section of the bed higher. “Is Jazz here too?"

His mother pulled a chair up to the side of the bed. "Oh sweetie, she wanted to come, and so did your friends, but there was too much red tape.” Maddie placed her hand over his fingers, carefully avoiding the stitches that ran across his knuckles and down the back of his hand in a “C”. “This isn't the same as a regular hospital." She squeezed his fingers gently, like he could crumble like ash if she wasn’t careful.

"Yeah, there's no TV like when Tucker broke his leg,” Danny tried to joke, “but I _do_ get the whole room to myself.” His grin could probably be called a grimace at this point. “I guess no one else is dumb enough to play lab rat, huh?" His parents flinched. "Sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Maddie said immediately. "There was nothing you could have done. If anything, blame us. We should have been there for you, instead of being fixated on our inventions. We should have been watching out for you."

"It's not your fault," Danny replied stubbornly. "You couldn’t have known what was happening, and I was being reckless. I shouldn't have gotten so close. I just... I guess I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt."

"But _you_ got hurt, Danny." His father kneeled down, looking him in the eyes. "I'm not blaming you, neither of us are. We're worried-- scared, really, because our son got hurt when we weren't watching out for him, and that he's going to get hurt more because of what's inside him."

Danny blanched. "Inside of me?" Ancients, they _knew._ They were going to try to shoot the ghost out of him any second now, and then, when they saw that it didn’t work, and found out who and _what_ he truly was, he was going to be strapped to a table _again._ And this time, there wouldn’t be any mystery people to stop it, because they could take him home like everything was normal when it wasn’t, and he would be torn apart again.

But neither of his parents reached for their pockets, and Danny realized all three adults were watching at him like he was a cornered animal. Maddie nodded grimmly, holding up a folder like the one the nurse had brought with her. Another copy of the juicy details of his stay, he was sure. "The doctors discovered ectoplasm when they were checking your blood type."

"Are you mad?"

"Of course!" His mother scowled furiously. "Those two monsters _poisoned_ my baby boy without a single thought for what they were doing to him. All they wanted were some numbers on a sheet. They can _rot_ for all I care! When I--" She stopped, realizing she was shouting. When she spoke again, her voice was still and hard. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they _never_ forget how they hurt you.”

_What about what_ you’ve _done to me? Would you be able to forget yourself?_ Danny bit his lip. “I mean, are you mad that I’m, like, ghostly or whatever?"

“There’s nothing to be mad about,” Maddie replied, squeezing his hand again. Danny melted in relief, but then she continued, “It should be simple to decontaminate you. A quick pass through the Fenton Ghost Portal should cure you.”

“Yeah!” Jack agreed, “It’ll be easy to get that nasty ghost stuff out of you! No ectoplasm is going to poison _my_ son!”

“Oh.” Danny moved his hand away to the other one in his lap, where he stared at them. “I thought it couldn’t be removed.”

The nurse broke her silence. “Trying to remove the ectoplasm from your son could have serious consequences." She fastened the gauze wrapped around Danny's ankle. "Do you _want_ to risk that?"

His parents balked. "We wouldn't do anything to hurt him!" Maddie rose from the chair, standing with her husband. "He's our _son!_ What kind of parents do you think we are?"

"Hey, uh, guys--"

"Clearly not ones who pay attention to their children!" The nurse threw down the roll of gauze. Danny didn't miss that bit of irony. Not listening, huh? "You say you fight ghosts, but you can't stop your fourteen-year-old child from being abducted!"

_"Guys!"_ Danny's voice cracked. In hindsight, yelling probably hadn't been the best idea, but it worked, so whatever. "Uh." What was he going to say again? "Please don't yell at each other." _Way to fix the problem, Fenton._

Whether it was his brilliant speech or pathetic state, the three stopped fighting. The nurse picked the roll of gauze off of the floor. "I'm going to get clean gauze." She left in a huff.

  
Here he was, alone with his parents. There was no ghost to interrupt, no strangers to twist his words to hurt his parents. Yet, that also meant there were no witnesses if things took a sour turn, no friends that would let him hide in their houses. Danny took a deep breath and wished he hadn't. It was time to take the plunge. "Mom, Dad, the thing is, I was like... _this_ before. Do-- do you remember the day the portal started working?”


End file.
